Daily Archives: December 22, 2015

Or you get hungry enough and crawl out to the kitchen sniffing for food.

Which is exactly what I did.

And I’m still hungry, damnit.

Holiday’s are stressful. Have I said this already? Have I made it perfectly clear yet that I love winter and simultaneously hate the season of it? The “holiday spirit?” Because I hate it.

Oh, I haven’t said it enough?

I HATE IT.

I sound like a horrible person right now, a partially loony insomniac sipping Orange Juice and water at 4:06 am staring at an empty blog page wondering why she’s a partially loony insomniac sipping Orange Juice and water at 4:06 am.

Then she stares into the orange goodness in the flower cup and wonders about the validity of her existence, the reality of her existence, and then figures none of it matters if Iheart Radio plays the shitty song it’s currently playing.

I switched it. For God’s sake my ears were on the ledge ready to jump screaming “I never wanted to go out this way!”

What the fuck was I talking about?

Does anyone who reads these things follow my rambles half the time? Because I don’t.

The holidays, that’s right, how could I forget that bullshit. Out of all the things in the world, how could I forget that.

Like I said, it’s stressful. There are people giving you gifts who expect the same in return even when you haven’t had the seven years needed to connect with them, and drivers on the street don’t give two shits about their lives if they can’t get to Toys R Us before they close so they can get their daughter a collection of overrated Monster High dolls and their son an overrated collection of WWE action figures (that are really just dolls) so their entire family can perpetuate gender stereotypes and then wonders why their daughter is scared to speak up in class and does horrible on math tests and wonders why their son doesn’t have any friends because, little do they know, he has to hide the fact that he prefers to sit in a garden and sniff flowers than be with the other boys shoving and tackling each other on the concrete.

Are you happy with yourselves?

You don’t get your mail until 9 pm.

Traffic becomes the bane of your existence.

Everything is green. I hate green. That is my least favorite color.

Red is my second least favorite color.

Parties are my least favorite thing.

People are my second least favorite thing.

Chocolate, however, is one of my favorite things. I get a lot of that during the Holidays, it’s what keeps my brain from exploding and my tongue from mouthing off to people it shouldn’t. Who could let scornful words fly from their tongue if their tongue is slathered in creamy, cocoa goodness?

A serial murderer, that’s who.

And that’s not me.

Although, the money’s probably good if you’re working for someone. I heard Kidneys sell really well on the Black Market. But you didn’t hear it from me.

I’m a very sensitive person, you guys. Stress is in the air during holidays, I can’t take it. I can’t take all the expectation and societal responsibility and people smiling at you saying happy holidays when you know damn well if it was any other week they could give two shits about you.

I always stress out about the gifts I’ve chosen. I never have very much money, so obviously I’m not presenting a new car to anyone, but I try and do the best I can with what I have. I know it’s the thought that counts, or whatever people say, but then you wonder if anyone even gives a real shit about that. How do you know they’re not using your gift to wipe their ass with? And that’s why you never see it hanging in their house or sitting on their table when you come over? And that’s why their pipes are always clogged? Because that’s how shitty your gifts are? Or what if they just shove it in the closet and that’s why they want you to call them before you come over, so they can set it somewhere obvious in the house for when you arrive?

I’m a sensitive person.

Today in Big Five there weren’t many people but the feeling–it was overwhelming for me. I heard the woman ringing up the customers and saying “thank you, happy holidays” every five seconds and the workers who kept rushing past me and talking and chatting about random things and helping customers find products and the old dude next to use buying the air soft gun that he wanted to look like the real nine millimeter that he had at home and the two associates that sold their products like pros hoping to hook, line, and sinker him on some 129 dollar gun. I heard each one of their conversations individually and they were all screaming in my ears.

I heard each of their voices individually, I should say, but as a whole they were meshed together, one big clusterfuck of conversation and people were walking to close to me, standing too close to me–I don’t like that–and even though everyone was lost in their own little world it felt like they were all talking so loudly about nothing just to overwhelm my senses, just to make me out to be the outcast. Their actions were purposeful, I felt it, and as I stood there like a deer in the face of a rifle, I spaced out to avoid it all.

I’m sensitive to sensory overload. I don’t like loud noises of any kind. I hate cars on the street and motorcycles and vacuums. I don’t like yelling or loud laughing or bangs and although I like looking at fireworks their sound physics put my nerves on edge. I don’t like voices or banging of kitchen dishes or loud televisions. If the noise isn’t consistent, like an alarm beep, or if the noise isn’t music, than it puts me on edge. It’s why I walk around with ear phones in my ear–it mutes a lot of that shit. It mutes conversation and cars and loud noises and things that would make me more nervous than I already am.

When I don’t have music, which is rare and usually a mistake, I have a little space in my mind I go to in these kinds of situations where time no longer passes in the linear fashion we’re all used to thinking about it in. In fact, time there doesn’t exist, only nothingness, and the nothingness isn’t really nothingness, it’s just a black divide, a place that separates me from my physical self which is trapped in the realm of physical life. I no longer hear the conversations or read the words on the packages nor do I pay attention to my own thoughts. I, for a moment, float elsewhere until I’m prompted back into reality by whoever is with me.

Did I mention I struggle immensely with going into public establishments by myself? Well, that’s why.

I also haven’t mentioned that I experience both depersonalization and dissociation. They’ve never bothered me personally. Sometimes I get creeped out when I start having to ask myself if I’m in reality, but it never lasts longer than a few seconds or a minute. Rarely longer than that.

Once I blacked out and wandered into the middle of the street in front of on coming traffic. My high school friends were running after me screaming my name apparently and I made it to the other side untouched and woke up like what’s wrong? They gave me this look:

I was confused at first then searched my memory: I remembered walking up the hill with everyone, listening to my music and their conversations but keeping quiet because that’s what I needed after a long day. I stood at the corner with them. Then everything went black, like I was asleep. Then I opened my eyes and I was on the other side of the street. I laughed my ass off.

Anyway, today the Dollar Store was worse. There were more people but it wasn’t the numbers that bothered me, it was the feeling. Everyone was stressed. It’s like a bubble expanding, waiting to burst. Everyone was moving quickly and talking quickly and I hate that. Their feelings transferred into my feelings and I was stressed and getting smothered by the bubble they didn’t seem aware of.

I also confirmed the dollar store is run by the mafia. An old, white haired dude with bags under his eyes and a face shaped like Marlon Brando and dressed in a black button up shirt with black pants and a golden cross dangling between the two un-buttoned buttons near his collar walked slowly up and down the aisle next to the cash registers listening to his employees spew their “Happy Holiday” bullshit they probably wouldn’t say to you if his gaze wasn’t screaming “horse head in your bed” at them.

He smiled at me and nodded and I nodded and smiled back and I think I’m a gangster now.

Is that how it works?

The guy in line in front of us bought maybe eleven or twelve items and was staring around wide eyed with a “GOOGLE” beanie on and a meth-look in his eyes and gave the cashier a hundred dollar bill.

A hundred dollar bill. In the dollar store.

Who the fuck . . .?

Anyway, Holidays. NOT my favorite time of year. I don’t like expectation, I don’t like doing things for others because I never know if I’m doing it right. I saw a thing about people with anxiety and the fact that we often spend a ridiculous amount of time wondering if we’re doing the right thing rather than doing anything at all. And it’s true.

That’s going to be my hardest obstacle, being a perfectionist and all.

I’m sure everyone appreciates what I can do but I never feel like I do enough or do enough of it right.